Doris Tsao

Doris Tsao is a neuroscientist who uses brain imaging technology, electrical recording techniques, and mathematical modeling. Though Tsao has explored several aspects of visual processing, such as the perception of depth and color, her most notable line of research has focused on uncovering the fundamental neural principles that underlie one of the brain’s most highly specialized and socially important tasks: recognizing a face. Doris Tsao received a B.S. (1996) from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. (2002) from Harvard University. She was head of an independent research group at the Institute for Brain Research at the University of Bremen (2004–2008) before joining the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where she is a professor of biology, the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Leadership Chair, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.